Question

Say I’ve got a function that evaluates to:

function test_timer()
a = timer ;
set(a, 'executionMode', 'fixedRate','TimerFcn','disp(rand)')
start(a)

end

..and I’ve accidentally left out ‘stop(a)’ within the function’s clause.
How do you stop the timer object (or all timer objects) from running without closing MATLAB using the command window?

Answer 1

You can use timerfind to find the timers you would like to stop.

Like this:

tmr = timer('Name', 'timer1', 'TimerFcn', @(x,y)disp('Timer running'));
start(tmr);
stop(timerfind('Name', 'timer1'));

You can basically search any property you can define in timer function.

EDIT: You can use the delete function to delete the timers.

Let’s create a couple of timers to find and delete them:

tmr1=timer('Name', 'timer1', 'Period', 5, 'TimerFcn', @(x,y)disp('Timer 1 running'));
tmr2=timer('Name', 'timer2', 'Period', 5, 'TimerFcn', @(x,y)disp('Timer 2 running'));
start(tmr1);
start(tmr2);
tmrList=timerfind('Period', 5); % Find the timers whose periods are 5 seconds.
stop(tmrList);
timerfind

Timer Object Array

   Index:  ExecutionMode:  Period:  TimerFcn:               Name:
   1       singleShot      5        1x1 function_handle arraytimer1
   2       singleShot      5        1x1 function_handle arraytimer2


delete(tmrList);
timerfind

ans =

     []